oh good i just watched it and was hoping for your take soon

Okay first I watched this a few times and I'm excited. people on my plurk list may or may not know exactly how deep I am into Black Widow, but it's Deep

I'm primarily a comics fan but I'm a comics fan who thinks the movies have generally been good for the character— my opinion has always been that she does better in solo stories than as part of an ensemble or (especially) on teams, and I doubt we'd have gotten so many BW series if it weren't for the films

(In the same way Renner's Hawkeye is directly responsible for the Fraction Hawkeye series, which is weird to think about.)

My chief MCU to comics complaint is how the film history has basically doubled down on the simplistic "brainwash child torture" version of the Red Room from the Richard Morgan comics of the mid-2000s.

This is where the idea the Red Room sterilized all their trainees because of sexist bullshit!! previously Natasha was recruited into the Red Room as a young adult following the death of her heroic husband. after this retcon, we get this "trained from the age of 5 to be a merciless brainwashed killer" origin.

in the original comic, she defected from the ussr because of further retroactive brainwashing, this time by nick fury. but the MCU has started at an earlier place and so the viewer has gotten to follow her twisty redemption arc, which makes it work a lot better.

In 2010, when Iron Man 2 first came out, BW comics were trying to reconcile this edgy retcon backstory with the previous canon, but I think we're pretty locked into the "murder academy for orphans" idea of the Red Room now, and I can't totally blame the MCU for this but I think it played a part.

mmmmyup

esp. because the mcu draws a lot from 1610 which is the edgelord version of 616

curls up in here

Yeah, I think with Natasha it's specifically those two Morgan minis, which were both pretty recent when the MCU started and were of an era with the Ultimates, when a more military-industrial take on superheroics became the hip aesthetic post-9/11

1610 Natasha is a whole other thing, and I don't think they ever intended on making MCU Natasha evil, which 1610 Natasha always was.

Also interesting that they didn't make MCU Natasha enhanced by bio-implants, like 1610 Natasha was, which is something I like and am kinda glad the movies have killed in the comics.

But anyway, I've always been a bit wary about the MCU going back to Red Room well. I haven't wanted an "origin movie" and am kind of squicked by the enthusiasm for that specific story from the tumblr fanbase. I mean, I get it, because fans love to hurt, I've been to Ao3, but it's not my thing.

Instead in this trailer there's a focus on Alexi and Yelena, two of my favorite supporting characters and the kind of connections that were either diminished/ridiculed by the Morgan minis the MCU borrowed from or just totally made nonsensical.

What are they going to do with Alexi? I have no idea, but I've always thought he worked better as a tragic character than cardboard evil villain type, and I'd definitely like to see a thoughtful modernization of his character arc because his best story happened in like 1965.

Given the last time he appeared in comics he was wearing the idiot Ronin suit, it's hard to do worse than that!!

Likewise, Yelena— right away we know that Yelena has trained with Natasha and that they're familiar with each other. Originally the dynamic was Soviet Natasha vs her post-Soviet, GRU trained successor, but the timeline makes these ideas untenable. Are they peers?

We understand that Yelena is still more "Russian" because she still has that accent, and the clever mirroring in the fight scene.

Originally in the comics Yelena was introduced as a new, hungry character determined to take the title of Black Widow away from Natasha— once that plotline played out with a predictable ending she's been kind of rudderless, but I'd really love to see a storyline for her where she's got something else to do—

a real examination of how her own relationship to the Red Room differs from Natasha's, how people cope with trauma in different ways

I know people speculate that this could be about making Yelena the new face of the franchise and I'm… open to that? also open to her being the main badguy. mostly though, the action looks well made, the voiceover is cheesy as fuck, and taskmaster is here, I guess??

I'm mostly super excited to see what they do with Yelena tbh. As long as ScarJo exits stage left right out of the MCU after this, I won't complain too much. They could do a lot of good shit with Yelena.

I couldn't be happier they're not doing an origin. I get what you mean about people who seem really hungry for the Red Sparrow Black Widow movie. This looks much better.

anyway I wrote this in 2014 about yelena & it still… is relevant, even if she's alive now, thanks to clones.

I'm not sure we'll get the hints of asexuality that I enjoyed, or any resurrection of the old alternate universe grudges

but the anger, maybe, the ambition and the drive

taskmaster is an interesting choice of villain because he's not a black widow villain at all (red guardian and yelena obviously have deep ties to natasha)

but makes sense as one, both in terms of power level and underlying themes

what's borrowed, and what really belongs to you?

Yessssss

anyway judging by the little bit of fight scene we got will also probably produce some good action sequences

I know the reports are that Rachel Weisz's character is based on Iron Maiden, but I'd throw that whole thing out— there's not a lot of there there.

That Iron Maiden character showed up for one big group fight in one Black Widow comic published in about 1980 and hasn't interacted with Natasha since. If using the name "Melina" is a gesture to that it's only a small one.

If the idea is that she's an older generation of Black Widows that doesn't really exist in the comics (there's one weird Nick Fury WW2 special you could point to, and Claire Voyant) b/c Natasha is much older in the comics, but such a thing has already been established in the MCU via Dottie.

i am very curious what they're doing with alexi

the important thing is that Rachel Weisz is good

and in this movie

and yes rachel weisz is good

and yeah— I want to say they aren't making Alexei her ex-husband based on the age difference, but maybe an abandoned Ivan figure?

in those YA novels Alexei was Natasha's long lost brother and a love interest for the younger main character

from the tiny bit we've seen that's a sound guess, but i get more of a brother feeling while rachel weisz might be the ivan

also, Red Guardian is a long-running legacy title in Marvel comics, there have been seven or eight, I think

what if we got a modern red guardian to contrast with old alexei and his very good costume

well, it depends on what version of Ivan you use… that's another character with lots of interpretations.

a thing with soviet superheroes and the winter guard is that they're all essentially replaceable, it's a metaphor for collectivization!!

except Ursa Major

that's true, i was using it as a shorthand for "older kinda mentor" but he was like a butler sidekick for a bit wasn't he

I wonder if the fact that they haven't said anything about who's playing Taskmaster means it's going to be a twist

Ursa Major might have a wildly different personality in every appearance but he's always the same Ursa Major

and yeah I think a twist with Taskmaster seems pretty likely… I feel like at least one of the characters we see being friendly will betray the group, because, spy movie.

anyway for me I think the essential workable things about Alexei are that he was someone who Natasha cared for deeply, who "died" but really went into this Soviet Captain America program, and Natasha's handlers used that grief to make her more loyal to them

when she found out he was alive she'd already defected, but learning about that betrayal both solidifies Natasha's decision to defect and cut ties with her old handlers, and to mourn this connection that she's lost

that Alexei was portrayed as a noble adversary who was doomed because he couldn't / wouldn't escape this evil regime the way Natasha had

(he dies again saving her and being heroic)

omg stop giving me all these black widow feels (don't stop)

weisz will betray

and periodically Alexei shows up as a dream or a robot or whatever, to represent the good things Natasha had once, or thought she had

when he's resurrected again, like, 40 years later, in Daredevil, it's during an arc where Matt's wife has requested a divorce and he doesn't want to grant it.

whichever character or combination of characters they have her portraying they will have her pull in as previous guard and mentor and then betray

at the same time, Natasha inserts herself into Matt's life circus for a while, to avoid arrest and deportation by some major foreign diplomatic bigwig, at the end revealed to be Alexei

which I think was thematically resonant with the original story— Natasha is strong because she can let go, Matt needs to let go of Milla to hope to be worthy of her affection, and Alexei can't let go, and that's damned him

making him older would help incorporate some of these themes

and anyway there was a later major appearance where he was a secret ninja and that failed imo because it treated Alexei as someone who was always evil, an abusive husband, a psychopath, and a creep who grooms young women

but if Alexei was always bad it means he was just… always bad. it undercuts the idea that the real difference between him and Natasha is that Natasha got out. and I think that theme of personal choice is a good one for a Black Widow adversary

in stories about agency, good is a choice.

so I'm glad he seems likable from the trailer.

anyway I write this out because there are a lot of cbr style clickbait listicles that try to explain who these characters are in the comics but I don't think they really touch on the actual storytelling themes involved, how the characters have changed, what they represent, &c &c

it's always "is this bracelet we've seen in leaked photos a sign that MCU Project X will involve Increasingly Obscure Character Y?"

HAHA yeah

me, when on the topic of lorna dane or betsy braddock: AIGHT EVERYONE SIT DOWN LEMME LEARN U A THING OR 50000

like I actually read something about "ARE THEY TEASING BATTLESTAR FOR FALCON AND WINTER SOLDIER?"

friends, no one cares about battlestar

that's below jack monroe as far as "strange sidekicks from captain america runs past"

I mean I was really pressed in Civil War when zemo didn't have his stupid mask superglued onto his face because that would have been some comedy to have a blockbuster movie about superglue

the only people who care about battlestar are the folks who care more about "getting" every reference than the content of the story, and these people are boors who shouldn't be catered to, imo

zemo and adhesive x are important

marvel absolutely needs to do a movie about glue

nazis with glue problems

paste pot pete

there are a lot of Glue Problems in marvel

into the spiderverse 2: miles asks peter why he simply doesn't patent the web fluid and peter goes on a long rant about how paste pot pete stole it from him

LOL please tho

too bad they cancelled netflix daredevil there was room for paste pot pete there

Ursa major better be in this or I'm walking out of the film

I'm just happy for florence pugh

a great choice

the casting was well done and i’m optimistic about that